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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

From TN Edu-Independent - For me, one of the most hopeful initiatives to come along in a while is Deans for Impact,
a new organization committed to improving teacher prep programs. I'm
really excited by who comprises the group (a group of Higher Ed teacher
prep Deans) and what they hope to do.

This isn't some external
force motivated to have an impact on K-12 education. It's insiders.
Deans of College of Education departments that want to improve the
teaching profession. To many critics, they are sharing such far flung
notions as "Teacher prep programs need to be accountable, too" (written by Robert Pianta, Dean of UVA's College of Education, one of the top Ed Colleges in the nation).

What a crazy notion that we'd hold teacher prep programs accountable for the quality of teacher they produce.
It's certainly fair to debate and develop appropriate measures to
measure "quality" but we can't delay that ad nauseam to where we debate
it forever, and thus never come up with accountability measure(s).

I
have believed for a long time that if we're really going to have a
significant impact in American public education on a noticeable scale
level, our greatest bang for the buck very well may be putting time and
energy into improving teacher education and how teachers are trained.

The
fact is, however, that these innovative and non-traditional teacher
prep programs still prepare a very small portion of the overall number
of teachers being trained each year (or cumulatively) in America. We need to improve teacher education in this country on a larger scale. And faster. It's
unjust for kids to continue to be taught by underprepared or
unqualified teachers. Tennessee, and the nation has many great and
dedicated teachers, but even many of these teachers would have liked to
have had better training during their teacher training experience.

Analysis
of the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Report Card effect scores indicates that
several programs have consistently produced teachers that are
outperforming or underperforming other teachers in the state...The
following programs have completers that have consistently outperformed
other teachers in the state: Lipscomb University, Memphis Teacher
Residency, Teach for America Memphis, Teach for America Nashville, and
University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The report brings
up a number of questions, such as how is it that TFA Memphis and TFA
Nashville, who are heavily criticized for "only" training their teachers
during a summer institute prior to entering the classroom, produce some
of the states most effective teachers? What does that say about the other teacher prep programs in Tennessee?

Collectively, these top 5 teacher prep programs produced 697 completers in 2012-13 or just 14.5% of all teacher prep program completers (697/4,784).

Programs
that have consistently underperformed? They include Austin Peay,
Tennessee Tech, Lincoln Memorial University, MTSU, Trevecca Nazarene,
and the University of Memphis.

Their collective total of completers from the 2012-13 cohort? 1,862. 38.9% of all completers (1,862/4,784)Some of these underperformers are the largest producing teacher institutions in Tennessee:

There
are numerous challenges to reforming teacher education programs in the
USA and in Tennessee. There really is a disincentive for teacher prep
programs to change the status quo. Teacher prep programs tend to be
significant revenue streams of colleges and universities. Additionally,
teacher unions tend to dislike any sort of accountability for teachers
(and the TEA is a powerful political force in this state).

Teacher
unions and "ed reform critics" tend to hold up places like Finland,
Singapore, Germany and others as models of national education systems to
emulate. Yet, in holding up these national models of education, they
fail to be consistent in also advocating that America start to train
teachers more like how these countries train teachers (the way America
trains teachers, and the incentives and labor economics around teaching
are much different). Some of the clearest reading on this topic can be
found in Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the World or even this brief, by Pasi Sahlberg "The Secret to Finland's Success: Educating Teachers."

Despite
the fact that not all is well with teacher prep programs in our
country, inspired by some of the work being done by Deans of Impact and
others, my multi-dimensional hope for improving teacher prep in
Tennessee consists of a few things:

-A group of Tennessee College
of Ed deans would commit to improving teacher training and the teaching
profession and create a working group network, paying attention to the
Deans For Impact model.

-That the new K-12 Commissioner of Ed,
Candice McQueen would lead on many of aspects of improving teacher prep
in the state. Commissioner McQueen is well respected on many sides of
the "education debate," and is uniquely positioned as a former College
of Ed dean of one of those top producing teacher prep institutions
(Lipscomb) (*for disclosure, I have worked in the past as an Adjunct
Instructor at Lipscomb University).

-That school district
superintendents in Tennessee (especially of the largest 4) would have
the courage to publicly announce temporary or medium term hiring freezes
of teachers that graduate from underperforming teacher preparation
institutions. Kriner Cash, former superintendent of Memphis City
Schools did this a few years ago (he announced he would freeze the
hiring of the University of Memphis graduates due to that institution's
poor teacher ed training program).

-That business associations
and Chambers of Commerces in the state get involved in this issue, and
put "frenemy" political pressure on postsecondary institutions to
improve their teacher prep programs. Businesses have a direct interest
in improving the quality of their human capital, and improving how
teachers are trained to teach in classrooms and serve students can have a
direct impact on improving worker skills and abilities.

-This
might be a longer shot, but that the TEA (TN teachers union) and PET
(Professional Educators of Tennessee, the professional Teacher
Association) would also get involved and start to put pressure on
postsecondary institutions to improve their teacher prep training
programs (especially those that underperform). These groups could
provide a key role to help organize teacher voices to give feedback to
postsecondary institutions regarding aspects of teacher training that
are critical and elements of teacher training that are notably absent or
deficient from current teacher prep programs.

I'm excited for
many of the efforts out there to improve teacher training and
preparation. Hopefully we can really prioritize this issue in Tennessee
and see some meaningful reforms and improvements to teacher prep
programs.

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As the author of A Disgruntled Republican I often post items which I think may be of interest to the conservative, Republican, libertarian or the greater community. Posting of a press release or an announcement of an event does not necessarily indicate an endorsement. Rod